By: John Stonestreet – The Christian Post; christianpost.com

After seeing the images out of Kabul in recent days, Maajid Nawaz, a former radical Muslim, said, “Barefoot Taliban conquered a palace. They believed in something and fought for nothing. I have lived with men like this in prison. It is difficult to describe just how seriously they take their cause. There is a lesson here for us in the West, if we are humble enough to see it.”

We hear the terror from Afghan women who now wonder what the lives of their daughters will be like, worried that 20 years of progress in women’s rights have disappeared overnight. We see the desperation of men so afraid of what might come next that they’re literally clinging to the wheels of American aircraft as they depart. Yet, we struggle to have a category for what they actually fear. Many Westerners don’t have the categories to understand the realities of Islamic fundamentalism.

https://www.christianpost.com/news/the-worldview-of-the-taliban.html

By: Yaakov Katz – The Jerusalem Post; jpost.com

All withdrawals in this part of the world end the same, with the vacuum being filled by hostile and radical terrorist elements.

It wasn’t even really a battle. On June 10, 2007, clashes erupted between Hamas and Fatah forces in the Gaza Strip. Israel had withdrawn from the coastal enclave two years earlier, and after Hamas came to power in the January 2006 election, the two sides were constantly fighting over how to jointly rule over the Palestinian people.

At the time, an American general was stationed in Israel responsible for helping to train Fatah forces loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton, US security coordinator as he was called, explained his mission in late 2006. Iran, he said, was helping arm Hamas, and the US wanted to prevent “moderate forces” from being eliminated.

What happened over five days in the summer of 2007 cannot be blamed solely on the Americans. Fatah – the movement and security force that had received support from the West – fell apart in a matter of days. Years later, Fatah members still recall with trauma the way Hamas threw their friends off the roof or tied them up to motorcycles and dragged them through Gaza’s pothole-laden streets.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/from-taliban-to-hamas-middle-east-vacuums-never-end-well-opinion-677197

By: Khaled Abu Toameh – The Jerusalem Post; jpost.com

“We congratulate the Muslim Afghan people for the defeat of the American occupation on all Afghan lands,” Hamas said in a statement.

In response to the Taliban re-conquest of Afghanistan, Hamas on Monday congratulated the Afghan people for “defeating” the US.“

We congratulate the Muslim Afghan people for the defeat of the American occupation on all Afghan lands, and we congratulate the Taliban movement and its brave leadership on this victory, which culminated its long struggle over the past 20 years,” Hamas said in a statement.“

While Hamas wishes the Afghan Muslim people and its leadership success in achieving unity, stability and prosperity for Afghanistan and its people, it stresses that the demise of the American occupation and its allies proves that the resistance of the peoples, foremost of which is our struggling Palestinian people, will achieve victory.”

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/hamas-congratulates-taliban-for-defeating-us-676851

CBN News; cbn.com

U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) joined with five of their Democratic colleagues to call on the U.S. Treasury to stop giving tax-exempt status to U.S. charitable organizations with operations in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem – Jewish areas that are known biblically as Judea and Samaria. 

It’s the latest example of a global leftist strategy to Boycott, Sanction, and Divest (BDS) from any organization that helps or does business with Israel – an effort that many have deemed antisemitic.

The Algemeiner reports in a July 22 letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the Democratic lawmakers expressed their “extreme concern that U.S. charities are funding and providing direct support to Israeli organizations that are working to expand and perpetuate” Jewish settlements. They claim the charities are “supporting the dispossession and forced displacement of Palestinians.”

https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/israel/2021/august/tlaib-aoc-ramp-up-bds-effort-to-punish-us-charities-that-help-israelis-in-judea-and-samaria

i24 News; i24news.tv

Ashram ends two decades of Russian dominance of the sport and caps off a strong Olympic Games for Israel

Israel won its first medal in Olympic rhythmic gymnastics and continued a strong Tokyo Games overall as Linoy Ashram took gold in the individual all-around on Saturday.

Russian Dina Averina, three-times world champion, took the silver, while Belarus’s Alina Harnasko bagged bronze.

Ashram edged out Averina to end two decades of Russian Olympic dominance and claim her country’s third-ever Olympic gold medal.

The 22-year-old follows in the footsteps of sailor Gal Fridman and Artem Dolgopyat, who won men’s floor gold in the artistic gymnastics in Tokyo.

https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/1628335464-tokyo-olympics-rhythmic-gymnast-linoy-ashram-wins-israel-s-third-ever-gold-medal

By: Mark Tooley – The Christian Post; christianpost.com

A July 23 New York Times full page ad implored: “Let Cuba Live!”

Readers may have expected the ad to offer solidarity to anti-regime protests and to call for an end to Cuba’s 62-year-old communist dictatorship with one-party rule enforced by a police state.

But no, the ad urged removal of U.S. sanctions on Cuba, which it claimed are the real cause of Cuban suffering, repeating the claims of Cuba’s dictatorship. There was no mention of human rights or the appeals of protesters.

Signers to the ad were predictable: Jane Fonda, Daniel Ellsberg, Susan Sarandon, Noam Chomsky, Oliver Stone. Jeremy Corbyn. CODEPINK, and Black Lives Matters Global Network. Regarding the latter, it should be noted that black Cubans have prominently protested against the regime and suffered consequences for it.

https://www.christianpost.com/voices/churches-cuba-and-communism.html

By: Michael Gryboski – The Christian Post; christianpost.com

A grandson of the late evangelist Billy Graham has been released from the hospital after battling what is reported to be the Delta variant of the coronavirus.

Jonathan Lotz, son of Anne Graham Lotz, was admitted to the intensive care unit last month in critical condition as he battled COVID-19 and pneumonia, according to his mother.

In an announcement Sunday evening, Graham Lotz posted to Facebook that her son was discharged from the hospital and home in Raleigh, North Carolina.

“Praise God!” she declared in her update. By Monday morning, the post had around 28,000 “likes” and 25,000 “loves.”

https://www.christianpost.com/us/billy-grahams-grandson-released-from-hospital-amid-covid-battle.html

By: Laurie Kellman – AP News; apnews.com

ESHHAR, Israel (AP) — Idit Harel Segal was turning 50, and she had chosen a gift: She was going to give one of her own kidneys to a stranger.

The kindergarten teacher from northern Israel, a proud Israeli, hoped her choice would set an example of generosity in a land of perpetual conflict. She was spurred by memories of her late grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, who told her to live meaningfully, and by Jewish tradition, which holds that there’s no higher duty than saving a life.

So Segal contacted a group that links donors and recipients, launching a nine-month process to transfer her kidney to someone who needed one.

That someone turned out to be a 3-year-old Palestinian boy from the Gaza Strip.

https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-health-religion-israel-b3563e5b2fb2cdecb21b779adecd9497

By: Wendy Rhodes – The Palm Beach Post; palmbeachpost.com

The Israeli Defense Forces’ National Rescue Unit recovered 81 of the 97 victims from the Champlain Towers South condo collapse site in Surfside.

When Lt. Col. Golan Vach, commander of the Israeli Defense Forces’ National Rescue Unit, located a man’s ring while searching the debris field of the collapsed Champlain Towers South in Surfside, he knew immediately to whom it belonged.

He knew, because he had met with families of the scores of missing people. He had studied photographs of the missing, learned about their possessions — a necklace with a heart pendant, a gold watch, a blue table.

He had learned about the habits of each potential victim and even knew in which room each likely would have been during the collapse.

And, amid unimaginable tangles of rebar jutting out from a sea of concrete that was once their homes, he knew precisely where each victim would be located.

https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/2021/07/26/surfside-condo-collapse-how-israeli-team-found-majority-victims/8021350002/

By: Jeannie Ortega Law – The Christian Post; christianpost.com

Grandson of the late evangelist Billy Graham Jonathan Lotz is currently in critical condition battling COVID-19, but he continues to share the good news of Jesus Christ while in the hospital. 

Anne Graham Lotz, Billy Graham’s daughter, took to social media to ask for prayer for her son over the weekend.

“Fifty years ago I could hold my son in my arms. Now I have placed him in the arms of Jesus,” her post read.

She explained that he is in the intensive care unit and communicating with her via text message. The 73-year-old mother and evangelist shared that her son was “physically exhausted yet spiritually overflowing.”

“I am continually pouring over the Psalms of Ascent (120-134) in ICU. I have had the privilege of sharing Jesus with the ER & ICU staff! What a Savior! God is so good!” Jonathan testified to his mother in his update.

https://www.christianpost.com/news/billy-grahams-grandson-sharing-gospel-in-icu-battling-covid-19.html